Position in chronology
TMH 05, 020
About this tablet
A small Early Dynastic administrative tablet from Nippur, in southern Iraq, dating to roughly 2500 BCE. It lists four men, each identified as the 'servant' (dependent worker) of a particular master — a vizier, a woman named Nin-ikuš, a man named Ur-BARA — and closes with a note that one Lugal-ezem 'returned' or reclaimed them. It is a glimpse of how labor was tracked person by person in a Sumerian city, with workers recorded under the names of the households they belonged to.
Plain-language summary by the engine — meant as a doorway into the literal translation below.
Written in modern English
This is a roster of four workers, each listed with the person he answers to: Gazaza, who belongs to the vizier; Ur-gu, who belongs to Nin-ikuš; En-gi, whose master's name is broken away; and Lugal-ušurmu, who belongs to Ur-BARA. They are counted as servants of the provisioner. Lugal-ezem took them back, or returned them. Nothing more is recorded.
A modern paraphrase of the literal translation — same content, contemporary voice.
Translation — our engine
Our engine1 (person): Gazaza, servant of the sukkal (vizier); 1 (person): Ur-gu, servant of Nin-ikuš; 1 (person): En-gi, servant of [...]; 1 (person): Lugal-ušurmu, servant of Ur-BARA; servant(s) of the provisioner (u-a): Lugal-ezem returned (them) / took (them) back.
Our translation engine — Fable 5. Reads the photo, translates the cuneiform, and writes a plain-language interpretation. See methodology for limits.
Spotted an error? Suggest a correction — confirmed corrections feed the engine's knowledge base.
Transliteration
1(asz@c) ga-za-za ARAD2 sukkal 1(asz@c) ur-gu ARAD2 nin-i3-kusz2 1(asz@c) en-gi7 ARAD2 [...] 1(asz@c) lugal-uszur4-mu ARAD2 ur-BARA10 ARAD2 u2-a lugal-ezem ba-ta-gur
Scholarly note
Catalogue entry from CDLI (ED IIIb (ca. 2500-2340 BC)) — TMH 05, 020. No scholarly translation has been published; the transliteration is from the ATF (CDLI's Atf-Friendly format).
Attribution
Image: Hilprecht Collection, University of Jena, Germany (P020434) — Photo via Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative. source
Translation excerpted from engine:claude-fable-5 (2026-07-12/v7-evolved).
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One of the earliest specimens of human writing. Not literature, not law — accounting. The need to keep track of grain in a temple bureaucracy is what pushed marks-on-clay into a system that could one day carry epics.
A window into the world's first total state. The Ur III administration tracked every animal, every worker, every shekel — for a population in the millions. The level of paperwork was not exceeded until the modern era.